Tinseltown Confidential

by Martin Turnbull

  “I don’t know about that,” he conceded. “I appear to have bitten off more than I can chew. I’ve been so busy doing Betty Grable for Meet Me After the Show, and Gene Tierney for On The Riviera that I’ve fallen behind. Patricia Neal is about to start some science fiction picture called The Day the Earth Stood Still. She only wears two outfits on screen—thank God—but I clean forgot!”

  “Surely Fox’s wardrobe department—”

  “You’d think so, but nope. Then Marilyn mentioned she was coming here and said you might come to my rescue.” He faced the store. “You’ve got some nice stuff here. Real impressive. Lives up to its reputation.”

  Gwendolyn said she was glad he thought so, but she cringed to know that of all the smart and pretty creations she had on display, she was selling Billy Travilla the dullest outfit in her store.

  “Are these all your designs?” he asked.

  “Fifty-fifty.” She pointed to the eveningwear, hoping he might see something better than the gray shirtwaist. “Most of those are mine.”

  “Have you designed for the screen? These are very screen-ready.”

  “I’m friendly with Edith Head, so perhaps I’ve been influenced by her style.”

  “Her lines are clean, whereas yours are soft, more feminine. I like it very much.” He returned to the counter. “If you could wrap this up, I ought to be getting back to the studio.”

  It wasn’t until after the two of them left that Gwendolyn realized Kathryn still hadn’t called. She picked up the phone and dialed the Hollywood Reporter. The switchboard operator was putting her through when Billy Travilla walked back in. She slammed the phone down.

  “I’ve just had a thought,” he said. “I know the wardrobe guy on Dragnet. He’s in over his head, so I was wondering if he could call on you?”

  “Dragnet?” Gwendolyn frowned. “That’s all cops in suits. What help could I be?”

  “It’s the women’s roles. He hasn’t got a clue and is getting no help. It might be anything from the sort of shirtdress I just bought to more elegant eveningwear. Can I give him your number?”

  “If you think I could help, sure.”

  She was redialing Kathryn’s number when she wondered what she’d just said yes to.

  CHAPTER 3

  The sign at 720 Wilshire Boulevard featured a circus clown lugging a bass drum with a hole punched into one side. The neon blinked on and off: The Broken Drum—you can’t beat it!

  Of all places, Kathryn wondered why Mayer wanted to meet her at a burger joint eight blocks from Santa Monica Beach, and on a Tuesday afternoon, no less.

  The location wasn’t the only puzzle piece. Mayer’s invitation arrived in the hands of an old guy with grizzled white hair and pale eyes, rheumy with fatigue. He shuffled up to her desk last week, handed her a sealed envelope, and waited there for her reply.

  The last time Kathryn saw Mayer, he accused her of fishing for scoops. It wasn’t the accusation that stung as much as his venomous tone.

  She let her resentment fester as she wrote a thinly veiled blind item that she nearly sent to print, but at the last minute swapped with the announcement that Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner planned to marry in November. For the next few weeks, she flayed herself for being weak.

  When the wheezing go-between appeared in front of her like the Ghost of Oscars Past, curiosity replaced her umbrage.

  She pushed open the Broken Drum’s weathered door and walked inside. It was a typical beach-town diner: booths on the right, a counter along the left, and a checkerboard of tables in between.

  A waitress with dyed-black hair told her, “Anywhere you like, hon. I’ll be with you in two shakes.”

  A lone figure in a homburg sat in the booth at the far end. He beckoned her to join him.

  Mayer wore a sleek navy blue suit that probably cost more than the waitress made in a year. His shirt was regulation white and his necktie was charcoal, but he hadn’t tied it well. Its cockeyed angle looked foreign on someone who always took great pains to dress immaculately.

  She slid into the booth. “Come here often?”

  He picked up his menu. “When the grandkids were young, yes. They loved the double cheeseburgers.”

  The waitress took their orders—chili for him, tuna salad for her. Kathryn waited until they were alone again before she spoke.

  “I assume this is a conversation you don’t want anyone to overhear.”

  He unfolded a meager paper napkin that was bound to disintegrate within minutes and placed it on his lap. “I owe you an apology. My behavior after the Oscars, it was unconscionable.”

  “It wasn’t easy for me to tell you,” she said, “but I imagine it must have been harder for you to hear. Especially with that Distinguished Service Oscar weighing you down. I hoped my source was wrong.”

  He looked like he’d been shoved through a meat grinder. “She wasn’t.”

  “How long have you helmed MGM?”

  “Twenty-seven years.”

  “And this is how they treat you?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Not that they’ll get away with it.”

  The waitress arrived with their lunch. The plates were chipped and the cutlery battered, but the food smelled as good as anything at the Bullocks Wilshire Tea Room.

  “Thank you for saying that. I’ve found myself questioning the loyalty of everyone around me.”

  Kathryn thought about the scores of actors, directors, writers, and union leaders Mayer had screwed over in the name of greater company profits.

  He shoved his aluminum spoon deep into the chili. “My attorney says that loophole is pretty solid, so I don’t know if I can head them off at the pass. But it won’t be for lack of trying, I can promise you.”

  Kathryn was glad he still had some fight in him. His hair—what was left of it—was all silver now. Surely he’d reached the age when most men coasted gently into retirement. “Good for you.”

  “If you hadn’t tipped me off, this coup—and that’s what this is, you know, a goddamned coup—it might have slipped past without me being any the wiser. So I want to thank you, and return the favor.”

  Kathryn had told Gwennie weeks ago that if Mayer apologized, she wanted Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, MGM’s new French discovery, to be guests on her show. The two were about to start filming the ballet sequence for An American in Paris, and Kathryn sensed that it would be the studio’s hit of the year.

  Kathryn sat up, ready to make her request, when Mayer said, “How about I come onto your show?”

  A chunk of tuna salad sent her into a coughing fit that she barely managed to quell by swallowing half her iced tea, but it gave her a chance to collect her thoughts.

  “I was going to shoot for Gene Kelly, but if you want to come onto my show, that would be spectacular!”

  “I was thinking perhaps a retrospective of MGM’s history, highlighting the films I’ve helped pilot to the screen.”

  Kathryn shook her head. “Rather than look back on past glories, maybe you could talk about the exciting projects your studio has lined up, like this American in Paris picture. And Quo Vadis—you could talk about that, too.” His eyes darkened. “Or we could go with a retrospective—”

  “No, no. Looking ahead. That’s a wonderful idea. There’s another matter I wish to talk to you about. It involves Quo Vadis, in a way.”

  A rowdy bunch of teenagers burst into the diner, taking up most of the counter. They fired their orders at the waitress, who told them all to pipe down and quit making so much noise.

  “Do you know where Marcus Adler is?” Mayer asked.

  When the Hollywood blacklist blocked every one of Marcus’ career paths, he’d been forced to pursue work in Europe. He’d been gone five months, and Kathryn missed him like mad.

  “I got a letter from him last week. Quo Vadis has finished shooting, but he’s still in Rome.”

  “You need to convince him to come back.”

  “Personally, I’d love nothing better
, but the last time I looked, the blacklist was still in effect.”

  Mayer lowered his voice, not that anybody was nearby. “A couple of weeks ago, I met with Winchell. I let him talk about himself for a while before I started dropping vague hints about this rumor of my possible coup.”

  “I’m sure he knew what you were up to.”

  “Probably. At any rate, I think he didn’t know as much as he let on to your source—who I assume was Arlene from our legal department?”

  Kathryn was impressed. Schenck and his cronies were sure going to have a fight on their hands. “You think Winchell was just fishing?”

  “I do, but then he started talking about Senator McCarthy.”

  Kathryn pushed away the remnants of her tuna salad. “I thought J. Parnell Thomas was bad, but that guy’s a rabid dog with a rotted bone.”

  “According to Winchell, McCarthy’s decided that Red hunting has gotten everyone about as far as they will go, so he’s brewing a new campaign. He believes the homos working inside the government are a huge security risk.”

  “How does he figure that?”

  “Because they’re open for blackmail.”

  “So what’s his plan?”

  “To treat homos the way HUAC treated Commies.”

  Kathryn wondered what any of this had to do with bringing Marcus home.

  “Winchell and McCarthy are cut from the same cloth,” Mayer said. “Neither of them cares who their sacrificial lamb is. Winchell brought up your marriage to Adler. He must have said the words ‘lavender marriage’ and ‘lavender scare’ five or six times.”

  Whether or not Hollywood was truly awash with Commies was debatable, but Hollywood was undeniably nipple deep in queers.

  Kathryn said, “You know as well as I do that lavender marriages are as common as false eyelashes here. So why should I convince Marcus to come back to Hollywood if the likes of Walter Winchell and Joe McCarthy are planning on—”

  “I got the impression that Winchell plans to use your marriage to Marcus as an example by which all marriages in Hollywood should be judged. He talked about how Marcus has gone on the lam—”

  “He’s hardly on the lam!” Kathryn protested. “If anything, he was painted into a corner and pushed out the window.”

  “Do you think that’s how Winchell’s going to put it?”

  Kathryn suddenly felt like she’d been cornered, too. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I can help get Marcus off the blacklist.”

  “You can?”

  “But only as far as the graylist.”

  “Wait! What? There’s a graylist?”

  Mayer shifted uneasily in his seat. “There is.”

  “Who’s on it?”

  “People who have been accused of being Commies, or at least fellow travelers, but without much proof.”

  “It must be a hell of a long list.”

  “These people haven’t been blackballed outright, but just branded ‘Hire with caution.’ I can get him on it, but he’ll have to get himself off it under his own steam. And he can’t do that from Italy.”

  Kathryn let out a long breath. Like any good columnist, she maintained a network of contacts and tipsters that spiderwebbed across Los Angeles. She figured that if she had never heard of this graylist, it must be more classified than the Manhattan Project.

  Mayer said, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to scuttle these plans to get rid of me. However, if Schenck is successful, Quo Vadis might be the final movie I approve. Therefore, it’s important to me that it’s a huge hit. I want to send you to Rome.”

  “Send me? All the way to . . . Italy?”

  “I want you to write a big article heralding a new era in filmmaking. Hollywood is partnering with postwar Europe. European talent and sensibilities plus the Hollywood money that’s stuck over there. It’s a whole new world of moviemaking and MGM is at the forefront, and Quo Vadis is the vanguard. I even have the title: ‘Hollywood on the Tiber.’ How does that sound?”

  Kathryn could only nod. I’m going to Italy! To see Marcus! I’ll get him back home if I have to gag him with spaghetti and throw him into a steamer trunk.

  CHAPTER 4

  Marcus Adler had never seen Cinecittà’s reconstructed Roman Forum entirely deserted. For months, he’d meandered through hordes of extras griping about scratchy togas and helmets that dug into their scalps. But today, he had the back lot to himself.

  With production on Quo Vadis completed, the cast and crew had packed up their costumes, makeup kits, scripts, and cameras, and boarded their Pan Am Stratocruisers, leaving him alone for the first time since November.

  The four Corinthian columns outside the emperor’s palace stood fifty feet high. Marcus didn’t know what the palace itself would look like—the special effects team in Hollywood would insert it later—but he imagined it would dwarf everything. On each side rose thirty-foot statues on plinths of heavy timber painted like gold and jade. Even close up, the crew had done a first-rate job.

  In the center lay the forecourt where priestesses in white and purple had danced in praise of Roman gods. Marcus wasn’t convinced that any of it was authentic to Nero’s Rome, but he had no doubt that the crane shots that took hours to orchestrate would look spectacular on screen.

  It had been cloudy all morning, but as Marcus leaned against a copper urn, the sun broke through and shone directly onto Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and war; her golden head glowed as though Jupiter himself had adorned her. Marcus peered through his camera’s viewfinder and waited for the sun to shift just a fraction and light up her stern face.

  “FRIENDS! ROMANS! COUNTRYMEN! LEND ME YOUR QUEERS!”

  He knew the voice as well as he knew his own. But it was supposed to be six thousand miles away reporting on the grosses for Royal Wedding and which star shoved what body part into wet cement out front of Grauman’s.

  He lowered his camera. “I hear it but I don’t believe it.”

  “Some lazy Roman soldier left his spear thingy behind. If you don’t turn around this instant, I’m going to skewer you with it.”

  Marcus drank in the sight of Kathryn standing ten feet away, wearing a smile as wide as the Appian Way. A glisten of tears filled her smoky brown eyes.

  “Come here, you big lug!” She dropped the spear and threw herself into his arms.

  Her hair smelled of roses and vanilla. He’d forgotten how soft it was, like eiderdown.

  They hugged each other until their muscles gave out.

  “What are you doing here?” he gasped. “And why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have met you at the airport.”

  Kathryn pulled a white handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “Before I left LA, I sent a telegram to the production office.”

  “They closed it down a week and a half ago.”

  “I figured as much, so I went to your pensione, where I met your landlady.”

  “Ah! The redoubtable Signora Scatena.”

  “She’s a force of nature.”

  “That’s what it takes to survive Mussolini, the Blackshirts, and the allied invasion.”

  “I tried to ask her where you were, but she kept wanting to feed me.”

  “You should’ve let her. She takes zucchini flowers, fills them with mozzarella cheese and anchovies, dips them in batter, and throws them into the deep fry. You’ll think you’ve gone to heaven.”

  “So then she starts hollering ‘Cinecittà! Cinecittà!’ I flagged down a taxi and yelled ‘Cinecittà! Cinecittà!’ and here we are.”

  “Gosh, but it’s good to see you. I thought I’d be okay after the cast and crew left, but my plaster pals here” —Marcus waved his hand toward the enormous golden gods— “aren’t the conversationalists I hoped they’d be.”

  She wrapped an arm around his waist and lay her head on his shoulder. “I’m so glad to be here.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I come at the behest of L.B. Mayer. Officially, it’s for a story on
the new Hollywood. Coproductions with Europe, that sort of thing. He wants me to call it ‘Hollywood on the Tiber.’”

  “That’s got a certain ring to it.”

  “Assuming my readers know where or what the Tiber is.”

  The Roman sun had started to burn through the morning haze, heating up the painted concrete. Marcus knew from experience that if they didn’t find some shade, they’d start sweating like a pair of centurions. He led her up the stairs to a shady bench behind the columns where Robert Taylor and Peter Ustinov sat between takes.

  She took his hands in hers. Her gloves were made of silky kid leather.

  “I’ve come to bring you home.”

  His face shot up. “To LA?”

  “To LA, to Hollywood, and to the Garden of Allah, where you belong.”

  “This is Italy,” he told her gently. “No HUAC, no Red baiting, no jostling for the next prestige picture. In addition to which, the exchange rate is fantastic, so is the Chianti, and did I mention the zucchini flowers?” She didn’t even smile. “Of course I miss you, and Gwennie, and Doris, and Bertie, and everyone, but honestly, the prospect of going back to that rat race . . .”

  He watched her earnest face soften as she shifted gears. “How’s Oliver? He must be doing better now.”

  Marcus dropped her hands, got to his feet, and leaned against the column. He’d become used to experiencing the Forum so full and alive; it was jarring to see it empty. “I’ve lost him.”

  “WHAT? You don’t mean—? Oliver is—?”

  He felt her beside him, her hand on his arm. “I could have phrased that better,” he admitted. “What I meant was that I’ve lost him to the Church.”

  “What church?”

  He poked her in the ribs. “You’re in Rome now, remember? There’s only one Church.”

  Kathryn pulled her eyebrows together. “Oh, honey, I’ve been awake for nine thousand hours. You need to spell things out for me.”

  Marcus knew he’d have to explain what had happened to Kathryn and Gwendolyn sooner or later, but he hadn’t figured on doing it in person. He sat her back down on the bench.

  “Moving over here gave us a whole fresh start. It drew us together again, and removed him from those dope pushers and their temptations. Stitching together the Quo Vadis script turned out to be an all-consuming beast, but once that was done, Mervyn asked me to be the on-set photographer. This has been a monumental undertaking and he wanted it chronicled. Turns out I’ve got quite a feel for it. Between the script and the photography, I was very preoccupied.”